In response to Steve Kirsch’s open letter recently posted here, BNC reader Gary Kahanak initiated the creation of an online petition to the White House calling for restarting the IFR program. He collaborated with Steve Kirsch, Tom Blees, Suzanne Hobbs and Tom Wigley to do this. The petition is now live.

This is in response to a brand new feature of the Obama Administration’s WhiteHouse.gov, called “We the People.” It’s an online petition forum in which any petition that garners 5000 signatures within 30 days will be considered and get an official response. Non-binding, but it’s a way to educate and be heard. The system encourages use of social media to gauge public support.

If you are a U.S. citizen (and I know more than 600 of BNC subscribers are), please show your support.

Also, please use your networks! Below are three possible sample emails that we are sending out to friends — choose the one that most suits your style, or put one together yourself.

Version 1:

Please sign the petition at http://wh.gov/47I to support a technology that will get rid of all our nuclear waste.

If this petition gets 5,000 signatures by October 29, 2011, the White House will review it and respond.

Version 2:

Friends,

If you are concerned as I am about climate change and the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, then you need to know about a technology that can go a long way toward solving those problems. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is an innovative nuclear power design that can be a real game changer. The IFR is ready to build now, but it has been stuck on the bottom shelf since 1994. That’s why I need your help.

Without delay, the U.S. should build a commercial-scale demonstration reactor and adjacent recycling center. General Electric’s PRISM reactor, developed by a consortium of major American companies in partnership with the Argonne National Laboratory, is ready to build now. It is designed to consume existing nuclear waste as fuel, be passively safe and proliferation-resistant. It can provide clean, emissions-free power to counter climate change, and will create jobs as we manufacture and export a superior technology. Abundant homegrown nuclear power will also enhance our nation’s energy security. Our country dedicated some of its finest scientific and engineering talent to this program, with spectacular success. Let’s finish the job we started. It will benefit our nation, and the world.

This petition was created on We the People, a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov. Will you add your name to mine? If this petition gets 5,000 signatures by October 29, 2011, the White House will review it and issue an official response!

Here are a few tips to help you tell your friends about this petition:

1. Email: Forward this email to your friends, family and others who care about this issue.

2. Facebook: Post the petition to your Facebook wall to let folks know about it. Here’s a sample message you can cut and paste into your Facebook status:

I just started a petition on the White House petitions site, We the People. Will you sign it? http://wh.gov/47I

3. Twitter: Tweet about the petition. Here’s a sample tweet you can use:

I just started a petition on the White House Petitions site, We the People. Will you sign it? http://wh.gov/47I

Version 3:

Dear Friend,

I wanted to let you know about a new petition on We the People, a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov, and ask for your support. Will you add your name to mine? If this petition gets 5,000 signatures by October 29, 2011, the White House will review it and respond.

We the People allows anyone to create and sign petitions asking the Obama Administration to take action on a range of issues. If a petition gets enough support, the Obama Administration will issue an official response.

(That’s not the number 471, it’s a 47 with a capital I [aye, eye] after it. If you put a lower-case i after the 47 it leads you to a different petition.)

Here’s the text of the petition:

We petition the Obama administration to restart the Integral Fast Reactor nuclear power technology program. Without delay, the U.S. should build a commercial-scale demonstration reactor and adjacent recycling center. General Electric’s PRISM reactor, developed by a consortium of major American companies in partnership with the Argonne National Laboratory, is ready to build now. It is designed to consume existing nuclear waste as fuel, be passively safe and proliferation-resistant. It can provide clean, emissions-free power to counter climate change, and will create jobs as we manufacture and export a superior technology. Abundant homegrown nuclear power will also enhance our nation’s energy security. Our country dedicated some of its finest scientific and engineering talent to this program, with spectacular success. Let’s finish the job we started. It will benefit our nation, and the world.

Alas, there’s a very slight hitch: Once you access the page above, you’ll have to create an account at WhiteHouse.gov in order to sign the petition. It takes just a moment, however, and entails only providing your name, zip code and email. Then a few moments later you’ll get an email with a link at the address you entered. Click the link and it’ll take you back to the petition site where you can then just click to sign the petition.

Sure, it’s a little hassle but if it can help us get the IFR built it is surely worth it. Demonstrating the IFR at a commercial scale would pave the way for providing abundant clean energy for the entire planet. Please forward this to a wide circle of your friends, relatives and acquaintances, because we need 5000 signatures in 30 days. Thank you for joining us in this worthwhile effort.

Who is your target audience? What do we want to achive? Do you want to keep talking to just the 15% to 30% of the population that shares your views? Or do you want to get to the vast majority of the population who want a rational policy response – a policy response that can actually achieve the desired results?

What is the real aim?

I am surprised by your comment. It doesn’t make sense. You obviously support the US petition to support nuclear. But that will be against the wishes of the majority of the US population? But you support it as a way to improve policy, educate the law makers and educate the public. Surely the same justification applies to the petitions items I suggested for Australia – including the two you oppose.

5000 is very little votes.
Not quite effective. You will get an obscure answer though.

The swiss voting system is much more effective. They just voted against nuclear power and will soon vote for an unconditional basic income.
The later would be a better petition for the US too. Why would one of the richest and wasteful society need abundant power when they can`t even abolish poverty with all the resources they got now! That won`t change the real problem which is fair sharing.
Unlike renewable energy the IFR would just be another central energy producer in the hand of big utilities.

I put in 99999 as my zip code — I seem to recall it means all non-American locations — and this seemed to go through. Such signatures may well be discounted, but a decision by the USA to resume energy research certainly affects us foreigners, so it’s reasonable to try to put our oar in.

“WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Stop Global Warming by shutting down the coal industry.
If we do not stop Global Warming [GW] now, the desertification will continue and increase. Some time between 2050 and 2055, the land surface will be 70% desert and agriculture will collapse. Collapses due to small climate changes have happened many times before. If agriculture collapses, civilization collapses. If civilization collapses, everybody or almost everybody dies. We must prevent this by shutting down the coal industry. Let the electric companies figure out how to make electricity without making CO2, as long as they do so. Set a time limit of the end of 2015 to reduce the CO2 from a power plant by at least 95%.”

Is there any daylight in IFR and Thorium LFTR proponents joining forces and promoting mutual development of both technologies?
I wish that the IFR guys were willing to widen the scope of recommended development (in the petition) to a combination of Thorium LFTRs with a smaller number of IFRs to burn waste. A few IFRs could complement a much larger number of LFTRs (I suggest a ratio of something like 1 IFR to 40 LFTRs).
With nuclear waste, it always helps to just make less of it. LFTR makes less waste (and the waste it makes is less radiotoxic) [1].
[1] Le Brun, C., “Impact of the MSBR concept technology on long lived radio toxicity and proliferation resistance”http://bit.ly/bLqIxB

Robert, I have argued that IFR and LFTR backers have much to grain and litttle to loose by joining forces. The benefits are both political and economic. The Indians plan to use IFR type reactors to produce both U-233 and plutonium. The interesting thing is that the Indians only expect about a 1.18 breeding ratio, (as opposed to the 1.50 to 1.65 breeding ratio claims of the IFR backers.) The thorium cycle breeding ratio is only 0.14, and that seems hardly worthwhile unless you realize that a 0.14 ratio will produce enough U-233 to start a new thermal breeder of equal electrical output every year. Even are a the preforted IFR breeding ratio of 1.65, the high ratio IFR will require a year and a half to produce enough Pu to start another fast breeder, and therefore the IFR has less scalability than the indian fast breeder.

There significant economic benefits for the IFR and LFTR advocates joining forces. Both technologies have their own fan base, and by combining fan bases we would together have more political support than each group would have seperately.

There is another benefit an attempt to link IFR and LFTR technology. The Indians are are already developing LMFB”R type U-233/Pu breeders. Since the Indians are headed in the direction of IFR type reactors, much practical benefits can be gained by combining IFR development with with Indian fast reactor development. From he standpoint of scalability, as I have already noted, the product would be more scalability the product would produce an equivalent amout of nuclear generated electricity in a shorter period of time. In addition by targeting a lower total breeding ratio, the technology would have fewer developmental issues. Finally, by combining forces with indian FBR developers it becomes more likely that both Indian and American fast breeder projects would be completed and completed in a shorter period of time.

I encourage the community of IFR backers to be imaginitive and truly forward looking rather to continue down theie go it alone approach.

The rationale for specifically selecting the IFR is that it is by far the single dramatically different nuclear technology that is closest to commercialization. I view our current situation as triage. The patient is in critical condition, the clock is ticking, so we open our medical kit to see what is available. There is a box labeled LFTR, but inside the box all we find is a sketch. In the IFR box we find a draft of an instruction manual, and a bunch of parts—some assembly required. Having nothing else at our disposal to aid the patient, we commit to the tool that has the greatest prospect of saving the patient in the short time available.

Is the LFTR superior to the IFR? Possibly. That line of investigation should be continued, but we have to focus on saving the patient with what is at hand. Successfully restarting the IFR program may be the best way to give more legitimacy and urgency to alternate, and possibly complementary, approaches such as the LFTR.

Whether new nuclear plant technology will be deployed depends on power demand and economic and environmental factors beyond the scope of DOE R&D programs. It depends on complex economic decisions made by industrial partners.

Industry is inclined to focus on near-term deployment using proven technologies. Industry may not immediately support or be supportive of longer-term development of better technologies

Translation – without a solid FOAK client the R&D is getting pushed to the ‘long term project’ pile.

The LW SMR advocates have a solid FOAK client lined up.http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=30219&terms=mpowerGeneration mPower (GmP) – a partnership between Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) and Bechtel – has signed a letter of intent with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which defines the project plans for constructing up to six small modular reactors (SMRs) at a site in Tennessee

GeorgeS, certainly LFTRs can startup on plutonium from BWRs and PWRs. In fact BWR plutonium is slightly better in isotopic composition because of the lower burnup means more of it is fissile in thermal or fastish spectrum.

There are various detailed papers from a French nuclear research group that show starting up on plutonium is possible for fluoride molten salt reactors, see this one for example:

How many IFRs would be needed if waste burning was the priority? Well it looks like we’ll have as much as 10,000 tonnes of transuranic wastes by 2050. This is about 60-70 percent fissile in a thermal spectrum.

Assuming 10 tonnes per GW electrical IFR we will need 1000 GW electrical of IFRs to eat all the waste we’ll have made by 2050.

It would be great if we could combine forces of IFR with LFTR. To anti-nuclear people, divide and conquer is going to help them.

Looks like we can pretty much forget about the US federal government as far as Gen 4 goes as they do not have the money. So private enterprise would be the only way to get gen 4 going.

I did a little looking on what Bill Gates is doing since he seems to have gotten the energy bug. I guess he has picked TWR as his choice of ways to go. How does the TWR fit into this concept of eating spent fuel??

Sounds like DOE has pushed it way out and left it up to industry. So how is the R&D getting pushed into short term??

Short term R&D is focused on getting SMR’s ‘deployment ready’.

IMHO I just don’t see ‘Rural Electric Co-op’ or a similar entity ordering an IFR reactor anytime soon. The AP1000 is interesting but it’s too big. We have 988 coal fired plants in the US that are 200MW or smaller and only 12 that are 1,000 MW or larger.

IMHO The support in Congress at the moment is to get some viable options other then natural gas on the table ASAP for the ‘rural electric co-ops’. Without a viable alternative in the sub 200MW range then EPA dropping the hammer on ‘old filthy inefficient coal fired plants’ will be dropping the hammer on ‘rural electric co-ops’.

The conclusions of the study offer sufficient reason for optimism that the most technically mature small modular reactor (SMR) designs and concepts have the potential to be economical and could be made available for deployment before the end of the decade, provided that certain technical and licensing issues are addressed.

The decade ended, the technical and licensing issues haven’t been addressed. SMR’s are not available for deployment.

Yes but next to AP1000 the SMR seems to be closer to happening than anything else. Earlier in the thread we stumbled on a small commercial effort in that regard. Yes?

Absolutely. In the 2012 budget request there is $67 million in the DOE budget for ‘licensing and technical assistance’ for SMR’s that wasn’t there last year. Of course with an overall budget cut of 2.7% in the nuclear energy portion of DOE’s budget finding $67 million means something else got back-burnered.

Its interesting to see ramp up of new coal capacity in the USA over the past few years. In 2010 it seems all new capaicty was coal, gas and wind.

It also shows coal plants have a life of up to 65 years (as do the older gas andpetroleum plants). Some hydro plants are more than 80 years old.

@ 3 October 2011 at 4:08 AM

Short term R&D is focused on getting SMR’s ‘deployment ready’

IMHO I just don’t see ‘Rural Electric Co-op’ or a similar entity ordering an IFR reactor anytime soon. The AP1000 is interesting but it’s too big. We have 988 coal fired plants in the US that are 200MW or smaller and only 12 that are 1,000 MW or larger.

IMHO The support in Congress at the moment is to get some viable options other then natural gas on the table ASAP for the ‘rural electric co-ops’. Without a viable alternative in the sub 200MW range then EPA dropping the hammer on ‘old filthy inefficient coal fired plants’ will be dropping the hammer on ‘rural electric co-ops’.

Very interesting. And important!

The US thrust to get SMR’s licenced and viable may be being pushed mainly for US interests. But it is also what is needed to solve the world problem too. To allow nuclear (instead of coal) to be rolled out across smaller developing nations (eg African nations), we need small to medium sized units. Small to medium units would be much easier to accommodate in the Australian grid. And it would be much easier and quicker to gain public acceptance and approval for small units, at least to get started (as long as the LCOE is competitive with other available alternatives).

The decade ended, the technical and licensing issues haven’t been addressed. SMR’s are not available for deployment.

What are the main causes of the delay? Is it politics, or regulator inertia, or lack of funding, or reluctance of private developers to take the financial risk on demonstrating their products given how the public has managed to bring so many previous attempts to a halt and cause financial disaster for the owners and investors? Or perhaps the numbers don’t stack up, so they cannot be economic?. Or some other principal reason?
3 October 2011 at 7:17 AM

In the 2012 budget request there is $67 million in the DOE budget for ‘licensing and technical assistance’ for SMR’s that wasn’t there last year.

“Its interesting to see ramp up of new coal capacity in the USA over the past few years. In 2010 it seems all new capaicty was coal, gas and wind.”

I looked at the plot and there is a ramp up for coal but not huge compared to NG and wind.

I will stick to my guns and still maintain that NG and wind are probably a “second best” if you can not get any nuclear in. It beats coal by a mile (I dismiss the earlier article about ” NG would make an insignificant reduction in CO2 compared to coal”.)

I do however think that that argument works well if it is a winner takes all scenario like in Australia.

However I TOTALLY agree w/ the main thrust of this forum that Nuclear is the most economical approach since you do not need 2 layers of generation.

Up thread we learned that TVA in interested in the B&W ‘small’ modular design. So surely this is one of the two SMR designs DoE is now helping to push through to NRC certification. What is the other one?

“The Caller claimed to have learned that the EPA was planning to hire “230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion” to implement new greenhouse gas regulations. That was the scoop. $21 billion and 230,000 new EPA bureaucrats! That is false. It’s based on a misreading of a Justice Department brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals DC circuit, which presents the “$21 billion” figure as an example of what the EPA would need to regulate emissions if the rule they’re going to court to defend is blocked.”

“EPA Issued “Tailoring Rule” To Avoid Scenario Requiring 230,000 New Workers. Conservative media are distorting a September 16 court filing, which explains why EPA issued the “tailoring rule” in May 2010 and asks the court to throw out an industry challenge to the rule. EPA stated in the brief that in the absence of the “tailoring rule,……”

harrywr2 – “Translation – without a solid FOAK client the R&D is getting pushed to the ‘long term project’ pile.”

Completely agree. Both LFTR and IFR research will be valuable and be supported. We have thousands of tons of radioactive waste that will have to cleaned up properly sometime. If we can generate energy doing this as well then so much the better.

The IFR still has to debug and prove the electochemical separation of the fuel that the I in IFR depends on. There would be a lot of work to do before the IFR is commercially ready assuming of course the process makes it out of the lab as many promising processes have founded at this point.

http://www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs/2002/07/43534.pdf
“Demonstration of remote fabrication of the fuel was not accomplished prior to cancellation of the IFR program by the Clinton Administration in 1994. However, all the processes were operated remotely in a glovebox environment and a complete set of equipment was fabricated and qualified for hot cell operation.”

From the link to the full testimony inhttp://www.nuscalepower.com/nr-News-NuScale.php
it appears that Nuscale has a utility advisory board with ten members. So it appears that there is substantial utility interest. I surpime this is the other small modular (but conventional) NPP that the DoE is helping to push to completion.

Peter Lang – “Is this (what)you are referring to – a court submission?”

Yes that is the court documents. However they are verbatim from the references I cited. In the blogosphere the fact that this was costs that would be incurred if the motion the EPA is defending was defeated.

It’s a little bit sad that “prohibit all federal agencies from promoting, endorsing, or funding fluoridation of the public drinking water.” currently has 2,690 signatures and “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race – Disclosure.” has 6,889 signatures, while the IFR petition current has somewhere on the order of 100.

Democracy by crackpot is not the way democracy is supposed to be.

If a non-US-citizen, non-US-resident can actually be meaningfully counted on these petitions, I’ll happily put my name down for the IFR one.

I do agree with above comments by Charles Barton and others that nuclear energy advocates need to be unified and work together instead of being divided into the “IFR is the one true way forward for nuclear energy”, the “LFTR is the one true way forward for nuclear energy” etc. kind of segregated groups.

@Luke Weston, I completely agree. I figured this would be a worthwhile experiment; after all, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We have reached out to the social network of the pro-nuclear community, and I am surprised at the tepid response so far. However, let’s keep pushing until we break through the 150 signature threshold—I want to see the response when the petition is publicly searchable.

Let’s learn as much as we can from this petition exercise. I think much of the BNC readership is in broad agreement that we need to expand nuclear power in general for effective climate action. The trick is in the messaging, and finding something that resonates both with the pro-nuclear community and with the general public.

@AndyB, yes, apparently the threshold for consideration was changed from 5,000 to 25,000, effective Oct. 3, 2011. This is an experiment, and the White House is exercising their right to adjust on the fly. Let’s keep the signatures coming; we’re at 133, let’s get to the 150 threshold quickly so we can gauge public response (or lack thereof).

” Six months after the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, solid majorities of Americans still view nuclear energy favorably, still support the extension of operating licenses at existing facilities that meet federal safety standards, and still believe that construction of a new reactor is acceptable at the site of the nearest nuclear power plant that already is operating, a new national survey shows.

In the new telephone survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, 62 percent of respondents said they favor the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States, with 35 percent opposed. Those strongly favoring nuclear energy outnumber those strongly opposed by a two-to-one ratio, 28 percent vs. 13 percent, according to the survey conducted Sept. 22-24 by Bisconti Research Inc. with GfK Roper….

Despite the Fukushima accident, 67 percent of Americans rate U.S. nuclear power plant safety high. This is identical to the safety rating found in a national survey last February, one month prior to the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima accident. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe that “we should learn the lessons from the Japanese accident and continue to develop advanced nuclear energy plants to meet America’s growing electricity demand,” the new survey showed.”

Glad to see the LFTR petition. It’s all good. The message to the White House is, “We want the U.S. to support nuclear power by prioritizing the build-out of existing technologies and by fast-tracking development of the next generation of reactors.”